This article was taken from the October issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content bysubscribing online
Kevin Scott wanted to create a bike that was easy to park. So he decided to bend it. “It’s a hacked bike,” says the 22-year-old,who created the bike for his final year product design project at De Montford University, Leicester. “I wanted to do away with putting the lock around the bike and around the object you’re locking it to, and put the bike itself around that object.”
Scott replaced the middle section of a standard steelbike frame with two tubes made from glass filled nylon. Each tube comprises eight sections and nine joints.
“Most of the development work has gone into the profile of those joints,” says Scott. “They have to have strength in all directions.” He adapted a standard cross-pattern joint (centre, right), modifying the angles and initial points of contact to suit his design. The flexible frame has another benefit: it hides the wound-steel cable that runs in tension throughout the tube, “so there’s no access for tampering”. To bend the bike, users loosen a ratchet below the seat, which slackens the cable.
Scott is preparing a new bending frame with an integrated lock. The bendy buses will soon no longer be the only flexible form of transport.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
